


Lingrah Tinvaak

by WilSquare



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst, Elder Scrolls Lore, Post-Skyrim Civil War, Post-Skyrim Main Quest, Regret
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24815428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WilSquare/pseuds/WilSquare
Summary: Paarthurnax has waited at the top of the Throat of the World, watching silently over the world he once left in ruin. Empires have risen, empires have fallen, generations of man have begun and they have come to an end, and still he waits for the day he will face justice for his sins. When that day finally arrives, he finds himself longing for one final chance to bestow his legacy upon the only person he knows will honor it.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 23





	1. The Old One Speaks

“The Blades wish for me to take your head,” Itar said as he rested his hand on the gleaming sword at his hip. Like a flash of radiance torn from the sun and made to dance in his hands, the blade truly had earned its namesake; Dawnbreaker. It appeared even brighter when set against the deep blackness of Itar’s armor, itself having become a startling image to the people of Skyrim as of late. Both were symbols. Both meant hope. But under the proper circumstances, they also meant fiery justice.

Paarthurnax could not see Itar’s face – it was hidden behind the sharply angled helmet on his head – but it mattered little. Voices were incorruptible. Their truth was plain. Willful silence was even more so. “Indeed,” he said against the howling winds chafing the peak of the Throat of the World as if they, too, were part of the conversation. “I have anticipated such a demand to come for some time now.”

Itar, his fingers still playing around the handle of Dawnbreaker, cocked his head to the side. “You have?”

Paarthurnax breathed out. “Since long before their predecessors forgot their true oath and cast aside their identity, I have waited for the day when they would take up arms against me. One final time, perhaps.” He paused, feeling a twinge of pain within his chest as he looked down at the man standing before him. “However, I had hoped that the one to which this grievous duty belonged would carry a name I did not know. I see now that I will not be afforded such kindness.”

“Krosis,” Itar said, displaying his fluency in both the languages of man and dovah with a misplaced act of comfort. “I tried to convince them to reconsider or that it couldn’t be my blade that ends your life. They wouldn’t listen to reason.”

“When they find themselves backed into a corner, wounded beasts often do not.”

Itar laughed mirthlessly. “I suppose they don’t. Delphine would argue that the Blades won’t be as wounded beasts for much longer, though. They aim to rebuild themselves. Recruit members from the outside, even. She and Esbern are in agreement on their first act of reestablishment.”

Paarthurnax stretched his wings, shaking loose the ice crystals that had formed on his scales. His bones were ancient, he knew. Almost more than the mountain he had spent so many mortal lifetimes meditating on the peak of. Yet the flow of time had affected his body little. “And that first act is to slay the cruelest of all Dov, is it not? Strength seeks strength. To draw it out, one is often required to show their own to all. A prudent decision I am sure was not made lightly, as was the decision for you to bear this responsibility.”

“I wasn’t asked,” Itar said, a bite in his tone, “I was told.”

Paarthurnax had watched how men conveyed themselves for quite some time. Gestures, motions, voices, the twitches in their faces, they all joined together in their efforts to give meaning to one another. He knew to read deeply into their inaction, too. “And yet you hesitate to carry out the command you were given,” he said, his voice alone. “You are not one to deny yourself a challenge, Dovahkiin. I have heard from other dovah in my travels, and most would agree that you wear well the name Qahnaarin. So what troubles you? What stays your blade today?”

Itar remained still. “To call me Vanquisher in this instance wouldn’t be an honor. It would be an insult.”

“How so?”

"Because it infers that the bearer of such a name – myself – did so by defeating innumerable foes, and in some cases, foes who were far beyond their own strength.”

Paarthurnax lowered his head until he was close to the face of Itar’s expressionless helmet. “And as you are now – he who brought an end to the Volkihar Clan, who wrested the power to control the world from the first of his own kind, who proved the dominance of his Thu’um to all with his victory over the Firstborn of Akatosh – could I not be counted among such enemies?”

Itar shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t. Because a Vanquisher has to have someone to vanquish. And unlike them, I know you wouldn’t fight back.”

Paarthurnax nearly laughed before that fragment of amusement fizzled out. “A bold accusation, Dovahkiin. How can you be so sure that I will withhold the wrath of my Voice?”

“Because conflict isn’t in your nature,” Itar said with confidence he should not have had in such a statement. “If it were, you wouldn’t have turned on your own kind when they held the world in their grasp. You would have stood with them when humanity rebelled against the dragons. You wouldn’t have done exactly what you’re questioning me on my conviction of right now.”

Paarthurnax raised up to full height, taking his place on the Qethsegol – the word-wall – and wondered from where this idea had originated. “Conflict is to Dov as the night is to the day. They are not opposites but are instead two halves of an existence shared. Do you not know the meaning of my name in your mortal tongue?”

Itar approached the word-wall, his hand still not having left his sword. “Does it matter? Your name doesn’t determine who you will be.”

“Ambition,” Paarthurnax spoke, rattling the mountaintop with his unrestrained voice. “Overlord. Cruelty. These three words make up the name you use to address me directly. Together, when they are repeated across millennia, from the first flickers of creation and until the last of them vanishes in favor of a new world, a name can become more than simply a ‘name.’ It can become a decree.”

“So what is it you want me to do?” Itar said, his words pulling at one another with ferocity. “Am I supposed to return to the Blades with your head in the back of a wagon? Am I supposed to wait here until they decide to come and take it for themselves? Am I supposed to ignore their order and turn against them? What choice am I supposed to make when none of them seem desirable?”

Paarthurnax turned away from Itar. He looked over the clouds gathered around the peak of the mountain, at the sky he had watched for many years and would choose to watch for many more in silence, protecting the world he had scourged. “Since your destiny was first unveiled to you, Dovahkiin, you have followed along like a rope has been tied around your neck. You have done what your birthright has asked of you. You have not questioned its benevolence in regards to the outcome. You have not hesitated, and your actions leading up to this day have saved countless souls from extinction.” Perching on the word-wall, a peculiar wilting sensation in his soul caused Paarthurnax to bow his head sorrowfully. “But now, as you find yourself for the first time without the firm push of fate behind your steps, you have begun to understand what a terrible weight it is to take up the burden of making one’s own choices.”

Itar said nothing, but for the first time since he arrived, he took his hand away from Dawnbreaker and approached the word-wall.

Paarthurnax, seeing the small movement as a wordless commitment to listening, continued. “Your questions, then, I will answer. Any you believe will aid you in making your own decision, I will not hesitate to speak their truth to you. For the sake of understanding, and for the sake of alleviating any guilt you may otherwise feel, I will reveal every last secret I have kept. I do this so that none will be able to question that your first actions beyond the scope of destiny were indeed justified.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is completely unrelated to my other Elder Scrolls fanfic, Melody of the Arcane. Felt like I needed something to keep me from falling into a writing rut. I hope that you, dear reader, enjoy my prose dumping.


	2. In Rage, Rebel

“Alduin referred to himself as the First-Born of Akatosh,” Itar said. As if to recognize his words, to insist upon their validity with dread, the winds around Throat of the World grew fiercer. Behind him, lurking, twisting with memory, the Time Wound rippled.

Paarthurnax had watched that very spot of warped time and space for ages, waiting patiently for the darkness he knew would one day emerge from it. “Indeed,” he said, the shadows of the centuries passed in solitude deflating the breath from his lungs. “My elder brother took great pride in his birthright, and he would speak of it openly, as he is entitled to his claim.”

“Then his words were true, weren’t they?” Itar’s voice was weakened as he spoke. “Master Arngeir’s, too. Even though I slew him, his soul lives on, and one day he’ll return.”

Such fear did not befit one who had been gifted with the soul of a dovah, of the power that comes with such a distinction. “Yes, for while my brother is many things, a liar he is not. Nor are those who would dare commit the limited time of their mortal existences to following the way of the Thu’um. When decades are but minutes, when words are given strength to echo across realms, one learns quickly that they are not to be wasted.”

Itar stood in reverent silence. His thoughts, however, were not allowed to be spoken, so Paarthurnax continued.

“A question for you, Dovahkiin,” he said. “If you were to become the sole arbiter of law among your peers, would you permit them the loss of their honor through misdeeds? In your eyes, would the loss of even a divine birthright be declared just so long as it is brought about by a willing denial of a sacred role?”

Itar changed his posture, resting his weight on his heels. “You mean his duty as the World-Eater, don’t you?” he asked, pausing for a moment before he prepared to answer. “I suppose I would, yes. If a duty _must_ be done, and the one assigned to the role refuses to carry it out, it’s reasonable to expect that the privileges it would have once afforded them should be lost as well.”

“Interesting,” Paarthurnax said, narrowing his eyes at the Itar. “Then if it is just for these losses to occur, would that make one wrong to deny the fulfillment of their own destiny? Would it be considered sinful to decide for oneself that the fate they desire is not reflected accurately in their birthright?”

“I wasn’t given a choice myself,” Itar said, a shrug of his shoulders doing poorly to mask the forlornness in his voice. “I once thought of my own fate as growing old and never knowing a life greater than what a farmer would. When I was young, I believed I would live a life in the same way many men before me had. I didn’t ask to be born as I was, and I certainly didn’t ask for the responsibility it forced onto me.”

“And yet, here you are, standing before me, the writ placed on your soul fulfilled all the same.”

“I suppose,” Itar retorted, “but I don’t see your point.”

Paarthurnax, with a single beat of his wings, became airborne. He didn’t go far, only to the middle of the plateau atop the Throat of the World, bringing himself down in the snow next to Itar. “Climb onto my back, Dovahkiin,” he said, lowering his neck, his chin brushing against the frozen earth. “We will fly together and before I land, you will have discovered your answer.”

Itar, although visibly unsure, approached. Placing his foot on one of the jutting scales along Paarthurnax’s neck, he lifted himself up and sat just behind his head, grasping at one horn to keep steady.

Stretching his wings wide, Paarthurnax lifted them both into the sky, following the currents of the winds leading away from the mountain peak. “Do you see the world below us, Dovahkiin?” he asked, surveying the valleys and mountainous regions of Skyrim. Scattered across the land, from the pine forests of Falkreath to autumn woodlands of the Rift, the civilizations of man had marked it all as their own. “Do you see the lives it teems with?”

Despite the howling sounds of air currents that accompanied flight, Itar didn’t struggle to converse. “I do. I’ve lived among them my entire life. I’ve been to many of the towns and cities. Met their people, too. If not for them, I wouldn’t have come to their defense.”

“Then think of what the world would be if you hadn’t,” Paarthurnax advised, dropping sharply in altitude so that the treetops were almost within his reach. His shadow raced over the pines with a speed that surprised even him. “Had you not honorably shouldered the burden you were given, imagine what would be left behind.”

“Nothing would be,” Itar replied. “Alduin would have devoured it all, had he not decided to shirk his own responsibility. There wouldn’t be anything. And even if he hadn’t disregarded his duty, only one other thing would remain, and that would be suffering for everyone.”

Paarthurnax wound around the peak of a mountain, spying a burial mound of a dovah, it having long been emptied of the bones it contained. “You are correct in your assumption. But have you ever asked yourself why it is that my brother did not carry out the purpose our Father insisted upon? Have you not wondered if Alduin himself felt the same rage as you when you realized your future had been decided long before your forefathers themselves came into being?”

“To speak plainly, no,” Itar said, gripping Paarthurnax’s horn tightly as they soared up into the heavens, breaking through the clouds again. “Whatever his feelings were, if he even had any, they weren’t more important than the lives of innocent people he endangered.”

“I would not challenge your belief in the sanctity of life, Dovahkiin, as I share it. But I would question your conviction in viewing my brother as an intentionally malevolent force.”

“I hardly saw him as even that much. He was a threat, something that needed to be eliminated before it could cause any further harm.”

Paarthurnax hummed, expecting such a reply. “And if your destiny was not so noble, would you have faced more difficulty in carrying it out? Would you have struggled with the cruelty of the meaning of your own existence, it being for destruction and nothing more?”

“You aren’t making a case that I should have permitted Alduin to devour the world, are you?”

“No, I am not. I am simply asking if the notion of rebellion has yet been allowed to cross your mind.”

Itar didn’t speak for quite some time. As Paarthurnax carried him through the endless skies, toward the oceans off the north coast before turning back to the Throat of the World, he could tell by the rigidity of the Dovahkiin’s movements that he was deep in thought. And still, even with the assurance that more words were to come, the skies were lonesome. Once filled with his own kind, the emptiness Paarthurnax saw now was not unfamiliar. For many years, it was all he had known. He knew that the sky held nothing more for him to see, and it surely never would again, so he returned to the mountain peak, his eternal lookout.

“Your point, then, is that Alduin’s domination of mankind was an act of rebellion?” Itar asked, climbing down from Paarthurnax’s back. “Even if that were the case – which I don’t believe it was – the actions he chose were indefensible. If he was so angry at his own birthright and what it meant for his future, it only makes his choices all the more despicable.”

“I agree. Alduin’s chosen rebellion was at the cost of others, and it was immeasurably cruel,” Paarthunax said. He climbed atop the Qethsegol and rested, his wings feeling heavier than they had been when they departed. “Perhaps, though, it was also a final act of misplaced hope on his part.”

“Hope?” Itar almost laughed. “You can’t be serious. If it was anything, it would be desperation.”

“When forced to its limit, when it is met with immovable circumstance, hope can become distorted,” Paarthurnax said. “Yes, it can become desperation. And what is more immovable than one’s own birth? Before you were born, your parents did not consult you for your opinion, did they?”

“Of course not,” Itar said, sounding frustrated at what he surely thought was a blatantly idiotic question. “You can’t ask the opinion of someone who doesn’t exist yet.”

“And again, you find that your choice was removed. Fate and its trappings were unavoidable.”

“Alduin, if he indeed was just a hopeless fool, wouldn’t be the only one of his kind,” Itar said. “I imagine there were just as many men who died without hope as those who died with it.”

“Then I ask you; how much more desperate could those men have become if they were destined solely for carnage at the decree of another? To cause all in their path to vanish into nothingness?” Paarthurnax felt a sharp hollowing begin in his chest, wringing out his voice until it was thin as a reed. “How tainted could their hope have become had it been given assurance that they will never know the beauty of creation, and instead only the agony of destruction?”

Paarthurnax gazed into the Time Wound, remembering the guilt he had felt in the first defeat of his brother, for teaching men the words that could afflict an immortal soul. “Ask yourself, Dovahkiin, if your destiny was as unpalatable as his, would you not seek to tarnish its name and thereby the name of the one who so callously laid the task on you in the first place? Would your rebellion appear to have been born from wisdom or would it have been born from an unending ache?”

“You make it sound as if you feel pity for Alduin.” Itar set his hand on the hilt of Dawnbreaker. “As if you sympathize with him and his actions.”

The Time Wound was a scar, really. A scar upon the world. And with scars came stark reminders of what had inflicted them. “No, I do not sympathize with his actions, but I feel for him first because he was – and still is – my brother,” Paarthurnax said, exhaling as he turned away from the tear in time and space. “And second, because to best accomplish his duty, he could know neither love nor kindness. Only rage. Rage against existence, that which he had no choice but to accept. That which in the end he still could not overcome, not even with what he thought would be eternal rebellion. That which he is still condemned to live out. For that ignorance, for a curse such as that, I can indeed offer pity, although it is in the same way you might pity a rabid beast that has become feral through its suffering.”


End file.
